MARXISTS do not favour a onearty system under socialism, nor • they believe such a system is a e-condition for socialism. We are of the opinion at the banning of political parties and the refusal to allow tendencies nd factions inside the parties of the working class is harmful to the ask of building a socialist society. The theory advanced stalinists that only represents one class's interests and that therefore the working class onLy needs a single party to represent its interests, is nothing more than a jastification for the bareaucracy in the Soviet Union and other bureaucratised workers States.
Never in history has one party solely represented one class. In the capitalist countries different capitalist present different interests and put forward different capitalism. in inese countries porkers parties are invariably divided isto reformist, centrist and revolusonary parties.
This IS the case capitalism. It will be the case when workers states are established in the capitalist countries, and will continue so be the case in the process of constracting a socialist society.
It is a precondition of building a bealthy workers state - the first step on the road to socialism, after the overthrow of the capitalist state freedom exists for parties, tions, and tendencies within these parelt to form autonomous movements. , and that oppressed groups have the If these freedoms do not exist then it is impossible to have freely elected and democratically right to elect whoever they want. acheiving times.
by the There must be believe are important. rule of. the Access parties them. the Neither will all obligingly under of *ideologically majority of whose evaporated overnight.
that and facmass opinion to their side.
Socialist Action 2 September 1983 controlled workers councils. Democracy in a workers state can ony be real if the people have the In the workers councils the elected delegates must at all times be accountable to those who elected them, which means they must be subject to periodic re-election and be liable to re-call at all such There must be no restrictions in the workers councils on the rights of the delegates to enter into alliances with other delegates, to form groups and to start a new party if the need is there.
freedom for the delegates to pursue policies which they Equally, they must have access to the media so that the people are made aware of their views and can decide for themselves whether or not to support these parties be revolutionary. It is crazy to believe that the day after the revolution, society will divide into two ideological There will not be a small band unsound' collie! revolutionaries confronted by a great committed revoluntionaries who have discarded all their bourgeois and reformist notions and It will be necessary for oppressed people like women, blacks, gays, youth etc to maintain, and if need be, to form new autonomous movements with access lo ine media so that they can influence the workers councils and win Even after a socialist revolution, reformist ideas will not immediately disappear. In Britain where there has been a long tradition of reformism it is inevitable that the ideas of reformism will continue to express themselves for a long period after the setting up of a workers state.
But there cannot be any restriction on the rights of people to put forward concepts. Any restriction political parties leads to the restriction of workers democracy and ultimately it will strike at the heart of the Marxist party itself.
If power in a workers state is not to rest solely in the hands of cliques and groups, mass participation is needed. But it is not possible for millions of people to take control over their own destiny unless they have access to all the information they freedom to organise. The latter implies the right to collaborate with people holding similar ideas which means forming either tendencies or parties.
If this is not a basic right then the needs and opinions of the great majority of people are atomised and consequenty tney cannot innuence events decisions. Furthermore knowledge skills, experience creativity of the people will not be harnessed in a constructive way and there is no possible way that socialism can be built without this happening. The alternative to this is to leave planning and decision making to a group of blinkered bureaucrats.
If the great mass of the people are not allowed to organise freely for their needs and opinions then they will not see any point in political activity so they will leave the political institutions in the hands of unaccountable leaders.
Democracy and mass participation are not therefore some optional luxuries but are the only routes along the path to socialism. The workers councils themselves will not be simply based on the workplace. If the vast majority of the people are to participate directly in the administration of what are now the functions of an elite then this means them extending well beyond the 'point of production:
The councils of self-organisation have to be based on all the areas of economic and social life such as the factories, hospitals, schools, neighbourhoods etc. This is of vital importance because it is the only way in which the most oppressed and poorest such as SHENUICN one-parent families and shops etc can be joined with the powerful sections of the working class to create a new society.
It is also needed to build an alliance have with the lower ranks bourgeoisie who have to be won to the of socialism socialism is to build a free and classless society. It has to be a society which is free of exploitation and oppression.
Build the The means of production will be owned in common and no one will be able to exploit the labour of another person. People will be free to develop all their creative talents and will freely exercise and choose their own sexuality. Society will be cleansed of the cancer of racism. The young and the old will be treated as equals. Sexism which is a sore on the body of eradicated.
But the setting up of a workers state does not mean that these objectives will inevitably be acheived. They will only come about as part of a mass campaign waged in the workers councils and in all spheres of society and that must be inspired by tions of the oppressed in alliance with offices and blacks, workers. in of the petty The purpose of leading ULi society will Solidarnosc organisacountries. Rosa Luxembourg and Leon Trotsky: bo The pamphlet on Socialist Democracy available from The Other Bookshop the advanced workers parties.
Therefore without democracy there can be no socialism. This is why all the marxist thinkers like Marx himself, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky ad.
democracy. It is why they counterposed the broad-based workers state resting self-activity against the class dominated and exclusively based bourgeois state.
Socialists have nothing to fear from democracy because without it their ideals can never be realised. This is why they are on the side of in Poland and the working class and the oppressed in all the capitalist and neo-colonialist
THOSE PEOPLE who find it their moral duty to defend the decencies of capitalist democracy against the immoralism anti-democratic practices of Marxist socialists inevitably accuse us of saying that the ends justify the means. As this accusation is made by people whose acquaintance with Marxism often limited to the interpretations made by 'liberal' professors there are, to say the least, some problems about the means they use to acheive their ends. But not to worry. In the crusade against red anything will do, and niceties like the truth cannot be allowed to get in the way.
Marxists santane justified by the means only if both are compatible. Marxists alc removal of capitalist society and its replacemen by a workers state. but we know that this can not be done without a mass social upheaval.
Such a social upheaval will only take place in Britain when millions of people are convinced that things can no longer continue in the old way and that they must do something about changung Ine siluanon The capitalist disposal professional judiciary, a police force, service. It is also served by a media that is overwhelmingly pro-capitalist and in the ranks of the trade Labour Party leaderships it has many compliant Subscryci persons. h argued that for socialists the ends and means must be compatible some tion on the agenda.
titude to the means and the ends.
leaders by disguising their aims. moles' dancies.
could oppose strikes ends Duffy and Chapple for the ple.
Lead fluence inside the unions. nas at its army, and the civil their ideas would credibility because -positions of 'spokes- positions This mighty array of forces will only be overthrown when millions of people are prepared to take action to end the rule of capitalism. It is not possible for well-drilled squad of Marxist revolutionaries to stage a coup LU acheive that end. Only when the ideas . coincide WIll masses of people, is the socialist revoluThis recognition determines our atFor example, Marxists who work on the shop floor could become workers' They could cover up the fact that we favour workers control and that we want factories nationalised that threaten redunto become popular more right-wing union officials they and encourage their workmates to vote for people like - if they get the chance at all to cast a vote for Mr ChapThis might lead in a period when right-wing reformist ideas were dominant to Marxists getting positions of inThen when there is a shift to the left they could reveal their true colours. Presumably streets then nave 111C they spoke leadership. But means would not acheive their ends.
Because they had got their leading their workmates to support both right-wing policies and leaders they would have helped to educate the workforce and members into the acceptance of rightist ideas. The means they had used would have strengthened the very ends they were against. Decided Marxists should not take full-time jobs as union organisers that are not decided by a vote of the union members and which are not subject to periodic re-election. Any influence that Marxists might have would be negated by the damage that they had done to union Their presence as a fulltime non-elected union organiser would the of bureaucracy against control unions by the rank and file members. Also because their position is dependent on the bureaucracy, and not on the membersnips voic, to act on behalf of the members would be restricted. The means used to get such a position invariably leads to unsatisfactory ends as far as the class struggle is concerned. Ends and means are never separable. The means used determine the ends.
In Germany whilst the Nazi movement was growing and taking to the against socialists munists the leaders of German Social Democracy counselled their members against violence telling them to rely on the Weimar Republic and its forces of law and order. When the Nazis took the power and banned the workers' parties those German Socialist Party members who did argue went unheeded. for 23 hours and 59 minutes of the day that the bourgeois state will preserve democracy, then at midnight ask them to take to the streets arms in hand. Such cowardly reformist means can only lead to such bloody ends.
Marxists only think that the means justify the ends when the means and the ends lead to the emancipation of the working class and and liberation of all those that capitalist society treats as second class citizens.
Manipulation is alien to the traditions of the marxist movement. It can 110c serve ine revolution obstacie on freedom. Lies and deception are the stock in because their rule is based on the interests of a minority.
Means The ruling class will use any means to justify their rule. the myths that working people are incapable of They spread the slander that black people are inferior. It is them and their paid scribes of the Sun and the other papers that portray women as obiects will use any means to serve their real objective that capitalist rule is permanent and desirable tame, well-paid academics and writers like Paul Johnson, Asa Briggs, Bernard Levin and deserters struggle like Roger Rosewell who can write equally Solidarnosc fights for political freedom against the Stalinist bureaucracy in Poland and would have been supported by Lenin for armed resistance •You can't tell people masters.
Alien lead to the ends of working class it can only act as an road to proletarian of the ruling the lungs as lncy are They perpetuate running their own lives. want Able ends.
They have their from the class MacDonald Socialist Action 2 September 1983 well for both sides of the case - but write best for who signs their pay che ques. All are wedded to a principle which says any means will do, as long as it servés the ends of their bourgeois Such methods are alien to marxists. We can only build a movement that is capable of overthrowing capitalism if it tells the working class the truth. Our means can have no meaning unless they lead to working people taking their own lives and destinies into their own hands.
The ends advocated by revolutionary marxists flow out of the need for the working class and the oppressed to assert their independence and to build society that history has ever seen. The bourgeoisie and its servants accept the idea that any means, no matter how dirty or unscrupulous, serves the ends of maintaining Our interests - which are the in terests of the overwhelming majority of people — calls for a change. We want freedom from the threat of war. We freedom poverty misery. We want the right of everyone to be free of oppression. Only the most democratic means can acheive these noThe dirty tricks, the connivance, the subterfuge, and the lying means which are used to cover up their exploitative ends, we leave to the bourgeoisie and their witch hunters. Our means will never contradict our ends because the working class has nothing to lose by knowing the truth.
Socialist Action 2 September 1983